Field of the Disclosure
Aspects of the present disclosure generally relate to a search apparatus which searches the field angle (angle-of-view) position of a captured image obtained by an imaging apparatus such a digital camera.
Description of the Related Art
Some imaging apparatuses, such as digital cameras, involve fully automated operations important for image capturing, such as exposure determination and focus adjustment.
Moreover, there is proposed a control apparatus which performs rotary driving of a camera in panning directions or tilting directions so as to search for a subject.
Then, the control apparatus can detect a person using a face detection function or a human body detection function of detecting the face or human body of a person included in the subject and can track the subject by performing focusing control, exposure control, or panning and tilting rotations according to information about the detected person.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-268425 discusses an automatic tracking apparatus which automatically changes an image capturing direction by performing panning and tilting of a camera with motor drive, thus automatically tracking a moving subject.
Furthermore, with regard to image recognition, among neural networks, a computation method called “convolutional neural networks (CNN)” is known as a method of enabling pattern recognition robust with respect to a variation in recognition object. As an example in which CNN is applied to such face recognition or object recognition, there is proposed a technique such as that discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-128975.
However, an imaging system which tracks a subject by panning or tilting a camera according to the position of the subject has the following issues.
<Influence on Electric Power>
To perform rotary driving for panning or tilting, electric power for motor driving would be consumed.
While there is no problem in a case where electric power can be constantly supplied such as in the case of a monitoring system, it is difficult to operate a system for a long time while constantly performing driving for panning or tilting in a case where the total power capacity is limited such as in the case of usage with battery driving.
<Issue of Search Time for Subject in Automatic Shooting>
In the case of a camera which performs automatic shooting while searching for a subject by panning or tilting driving, when constantly tracking the same subject, the camera can shoot only the same subject.
During automatic shooting, the camera performs automatic shooting while searching for various different subjects and changing subjects. Here, if subject search is performed while continuing constantly panning or tilting the camera to a great extent, searching for a subject would be time-consuming.